Nov 28, 2023

How these employees found and stay inspired working with the same company for the long haul. Written by Taylor Rose Some jobs will never go away — farmer, builder and tailor, to name a few. One job that also continues to stand the test of time is a tool maker — though this job changes pretty radically as society evolves. Today, the tech industry is the ultimate tool maker; however, tech jobs don’t seem to have the same kind of job stability as farming and building do. There are constant ups and downs in the job market for technology. According to a LinkedIn report, the tech industry has the highest turnover rate at 13.2 percent. The report goes on to say that most tech companies have a median employee tenure of only one or two years. Finding that perfect fit as a tech professional is no small task. Built In spoke with six tech professionals who have all been with their current company for anywhere from four to fifteen years. We asked them what makes their company such a good fit and what keeps them around. Senior Director, Global Talent Acquisition Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc . is a developer, marketer and publisher of interactive entertainment for consumers around the globe. The company develops and publishes products through its two wholly-owned labels Rockstar Games and 2K. How long have you been with your company? I have been with Take-Two for 10 years. The initial draw to T2 was the unique opportunity to build, grow and help make a significant impact with a fast-growing company in an exciting industry. During my interview process, I felt a genuine connection on both a personal and professional level, which solidified my decision to join the company. Who would have thought, 10 years later, I am still building, growing and making a significant impact across the organization and creating long-lasting connections with people around the world? What makes you stay? Staying at T2 has been a deeply rewarding experience for me, largely because of the genuine sense of belonging and acceptance I’ve found here. In my more than 20 years of corporate experience, T2 stands out as the first company where I can truly be my authentic self. The organization not only encourages its colleagues, but celebrates individual creativity, providing a unique space where I am empowered to bring my whole self to work each day. I feel valued for my time and talent, which fosters my strong sense of loyalty to the company. In my more than 20 years of corporate experience, T2 stands out as the first company where I can truly be my authentic self.” As a woman of color in a leadership role — within a leading game publisher — my perspective is unique. What sets my story apart is not only my background, but also my lack of avid gaming experience. This distinction allows me to tell a different narrative, one that highlights my resilience, creativity, passion and ability to overcome challenges. When I first joined as the sole recruiter, I could never have imagined the growth and challenges that lay ahead. With unwavering support from my direct manager and leaders across the organization, I was able to create my own path and to make it what it is today. What should a job seeker consider before joining your company? When considering a role at Take-Two, or any company for that matter, always do your research. You should have a good understanding of the company’s history, culture and core business products or services. Gain insights into the work environment, management style and employee satisfaction. Assess whether the company’s values and mission resonate with your own, and if the role you are interested in aligns with your career goals and aspirations, skills and interests. Additionally, consider evaluating if the company’s work-life balance philosophy aligns with your well-being and job satisfaction needs. A harmonious balance between personal life and work commitments is essential for long-term job contentment. What first attracted you to Getty? I have been working for Getty Images for just over 15 years now. My first child was born a few months after I started and he just started high school. I previously worked at a mortgage software company, which is exactly as exciting as it sounds. There was some trouble with mortgages 15 years ago, so I started looking for new employment. A colleague recommended I look at Getty Images. I knew I wanted to work for a company that people recognized. During the interview process, I was impressed by the interviewers’ working knowledge and experiences. I very much wanted to work with people smarter than me so I could grow both professionally and personally. I very much wanted to work with people smarter than me so I could grow both professionally and personally.” Do you feel like you are able to make an impact at work? The size of Getty Images strikes the right balance — I’m able to make impactful contributions, have a good work-life balance and also still find ways to grow and learn new things. At corporations or startups it’s harder to have these types of things, so I’m fortunate to be able to experience this firsthand. I have colleagues and friends in other departments across the business. There are no silos and I can work directly with other teams without any red tape. I’ve worked across several areas of the technology stack, including software engineering, e-commerce services, website and now search. Changing teams within the same company has helped keep my skills sharp and refreshed my motivation while maintaining the people and culture that I appreciate. Getty Images’ impact on the world is another reason that I stay — our editorial visuals make a difference. Coverage of politics, natural disasters, immigration, etc. is really vital in this age of disinformation and manipulation. It’s hard for me to get excited to work at another e-commerce company. The people here make it hard to leave. There is a strong sense of camaraderie — I’ve made lifelong friends and was even the officiant for two coworkers. What do you hope to see in new folks joining Getty? I do a lot of interviews and, besides the requisite technical skills, I am looking for how people approach the work: anything from critical thinking, problem solving at a systems level or having a point of view on how the industry works. Another important element is being able to work as a team player. Specifically, if you are able to strike a good balance between learning how Getty Images operates and bringing new ideas to the table. This goes a long way. Senior Sales Relationship Manager MarketAxess Holdings, Inc . operates as an electronic trading platform featuring data and analytical tools that allows investment industry professionals to trade corporate bonds and other types of fixed-income instruments. How long have you been with MarketAxess? I have been with MarketAxess for 14 years. I was attracted to the potential sales roles and opportunities MarketAxess provided. I did not have a fixed income background at the time, but I knew I really liked sales and I am a fast learner. MarketAxess gave me the resources to learn on the job. I also liked that MarketAxess was a smaller company at the time. I found having less hierarchy increased my visibility. What inspires you in your role? I was always motivated by the innovation and leadership MarketAxess has and continues to bring to the fixed income and fintech markets. Working in an evolving and competitive industry has been challenging and exciting at the same time. I’ve had to navigate and keep up with the fast-paced growth both internally and externally, while continuously learning new products and trading initiatives over the years. I also worked in different areas of our business, from client services to dealer sales and now client sales covering some of our largest institutional accounts. The speed and diversification of my roles made it feel like I worked for a new company many times throughout my tenure. Over the years, I grew and transformed alongside MarketAxess. To have experienced this type of growth with others who have been incredible mentors and colleagues has made it that much more rewarding. The speed and diversification of my roles made it feel like I worked for a new company many times throughout my tenure.” What is special about MarketAxess and your industry for jobseekers? Working for a fintech company opens many doors to learning about different products and types of roles, from sales to product specialists to data and research analysts, to name a few. Also, the people and culture make it a great place to be. I say ‘be’ because it doesn’t feel like ‘work’ when you are surrounded by people you really enjoy being around. How long have you been with ZocDoc? I’ve worked at Zocdoc for over 6 years now. When I graduated from college, I knew I wanted to work in healthcare technology in some capacity. I care about how technology can be used to solve longstanding issues within our healthcare system. I had considered going to graduate school for public health, but ultimately decided I was more interested in gaining hands-on work experience at a startup where I could work to make an impact on patients’ ability to access quality healthcare. I was interested in sales positions and knew that if I was going to work in sales, I wanted to be at a company where I cared about the ultimate mission and was a user myself. Zocdoc was the perfect combination of the tech startup culture I was looking for and the opportunity to work on a product that strives to make it easier for all patients to get the care they need. What makes you stay at Zocdoc? I stay at Zocdoc because of the smart and kind people that I get to work with every day. I am lucky to work for and with people that I truly respect. I’ve always felt that both my colleagues and leaders have my best interests in mind and have been eager to find me new roles and projects to keep me learning and staying engaged. Both my colleagues and leaders have my best interests in mind and have been eager to find me new roles and projects to keep me learning and staying engaged.” In general, the key to staying engaged for me has been Zocdoc’s willingness to work on long-term solutions that disrupt the status quo and not just quick, short-term wins. The role I’ve held the longest at Zocdoc has evolved from a new business sales role selling our traditional marketplace product to providers, to a business development role focusing on the go-to-market responsibilities for a new product that we’ve built. What advice would you give to someone who has an interview next week with Zocdoc? My advice would be to take the time to get familiar with our product, our mission and the folks you’ll be working with. It is obvious when a candidate blindly applies to a role without knowing what they would actually be working on or impacting. Our team always appreciates when a candidate is familiar with the work the team has done and is specifically interested in understanding how their future role could positively impact our progress towards our mission. Our mission, to give power to the patient, is at the core of everything we do, no matter your position or department, and we have a great opportunity to disrupt the healthcare industry doing so. Head of Site Reliability Engineering Trumid is a fintech company bringing efficiency to credit trading through data, technology and simple products. Trumid was founded in 2014 by credit professionals with over 100 years of trading experience. What brought you to Trumid? I joined Trumid soon after it launched in 2015. Chief Technology Officer Tony Schiavo reached out to me with an exciting opportunity. A startup fintech company was looking to combine deep corporate bond trading expertise with leading-edge technology and product design to deliver innovative solutions for fixed-income trading. I would be responsible for building the technology infrastructure to support Trumid. The CTO’s passion for cultivating teams with a ‘diversity of thinking’ would also allow me to work alongside peers from a variety of industries to enhance and differentiate our platform architecture. It was a blank-canvas opportunity with an ambitious goal that I had to accept. Upon joining, I was part of a creative team where the rate of innovation was rapid and exhilarating. The value I brought for every hour was realized immediately. I was making a difference and knowing that if I didn’t work those extra two hours, we would be two hours behind tomorrow. Also compelling was the chance to collaborate with colleagues to build an incredible tech culture centered around trust, offering a remote-first approach to work, which was unique at that time. What is special about the culture? What’s kept me at Trumid is the same as what initially attracted me to the role: the opportunity to see my work reflected in the organization’s growth. A big part of it is also our culture and the fact that we pride ourselves on staying nimble and agile as we grow. Our team is constantly innovating with a focus on scale and growth. We streamline and automate to create more efficiencies; this leads to people taking on more responsibility and continuing to grow. This sort of culture is what has kept me here and continues to drive me. Over the past eight years, I’ve gone from being an individual contributor to a development lead overseeing larger projects, to managing our platform, to my current role as head of site reliability engineering. We are responsible for continuously improving our developers' experience as our business and organization grows. As I look ahead to another transformative year at Trumid, I’m still excited by the impact that I can make. Month on month, year on year, I continue to broaden my experience and knowledge, leveraging technology to discover more meaningful ways to do more with less. Month on month, year on year, I continue to broaden my experience and knowledge, leveraging technology to discover more meaningful ways to do more with less.” How can someone succeed at Trumid? To be successful at Trumid, you need to be curious, passionate about your craft, ambitious, relentless, collaborative and driven. You’re hired for a specific project but that’s not meant to be the end game. Our objective is not to fill a seat, it’s for a talented hire to come in and help solve the initial challenge and then identify more problem-solving opportunities. We’re always looking for enthusiastic and energizing people who are eager to grow, take on more responsibility and continue to produce impactful work. If you’re an ambitious self-starter who wants to forge your own career velocity, then Trumid is a great place for that. Engineer Flourish builds technology to empower financial advisors, improve financial lives and retirement outcomes, and deliver new and innovative investment options. Flourish Cash is used by more than 175 wealth management firms representing more than $450 billion in assets under management. What was it like when you first joined Flourish? I’ve been at Flourish for a little over four years now. I was at Goldman Sachs for a few years before that, working in the asset management division. I joined Flourish when Flourish Cash, our first product, just launched. I was a banking engineer on the Cash Team. I was first interested in working for Flourish because of a combination of things: I wanted a change from working at a big company, and then because of things specific to Flourish. When you work in a big organization, things tend to move slower. You’re a bit behind in the latest and greatest in tech and you can get siloed into your work. I wanted to move into a smaller, more tech-forward company. I had a lot of finance experience coming from Goldman, so the fintech space made a lot of sense. A company like Flourish would let me work with more open source technologies and develop my skills more broadly. I knew that joining Flourish would allow me to become better as an engineer and be more commercial, not just in the role I am now, but in my future. What part of your job is meaningful? It’s really cool as an engineer when you work on a project from the beginning. It starts as just a few lines, just a few files running locally on your computer. Then it becomes a whole organization that’s managing billions of dollars. It’s really cool to be part of creating something essentially from nothing. Also, if you’re interested in other roles or other technologies, it’s easy to ask others and learn about the work adjacent to what you’re doing. I’m a backend engineer, but I’ve been able to learn about DevOps and data analytics from colleagues. It’s really cool to be part of creating something essentially from nothing.” At Flourish, there’s a lot of work to be done and if you want to take ownership, you can. When I first began, I was doing the work to build projects and was given things to be completed. Now, I have more authority in engineering and product decisions. Even when I was being told exactly what needs to be done, I could influence the features or timing. You can go really into the engineering aspect of it, such as security requirements or what happens if technical problems arise, but also from the perspective of what clients actually would like. I’ve become much more comfortable making engineering decisions and influencing product decisions What does Flourish do well? It’s a bit of a buzzword, but something I think is very valued at Flourish is being commercial. What that means to me is: A lot of companies or teams can stray too far in one direction where either you push out a project that’s incomplete too fast or it’s a perfect product, but you miss the business opportunity of it. I think Flourish does a really good job of balancing between a picture-perfect engineering product that has absolutely no flaws, and then also getting it out fast. I think that’s partially because everyone at the company is pretty good about thinking commercially, whether we’re in  engineering or sales, we think holistically about the project all the way from building a product to the end-client experience.